Black Working Families, Less Financial Worth

The first of a two-part report “Making It in the U.S.: More Than Just Hard Work” on National Public Radio highlights the fact that the wealth gap between the average black family and the average white family is much greater than one might have imagined. Experts looked at “things such as inheritance, home ownership, taxes and even expectations,” but in the final analysis, they concluded that the average white family has 20 times the wealth of the average black family. That is the largest gap in 25 years. These troubling findings were confirmed on the Bloomberg website when it reported in its article “Wealth Gap Between U.S. Whites, Blacks Reaches Record, Pew Says” that, according to the Pew Research Center fund, in 2009, the average white family was worth 19 times more than the average black family. A crucial part of our sons’ education has to be about financial matters with a focus on acquiring and maintaining wealth.